3 March (Part 1) - Muck raking
While we wait for
the Conservative's justification of their £248 million
investment claim a random search through some intriguing old files…
Despite occasional set backs I still believe that Bexley Council has become
better in most respects over the past ten years; from a pretty low starting
point perhaps especially in respect of Children’s Services. To the best of my
knowledge no children have died under Bexley Council’s nose since
Rhys Lawrie
and Ndingeko Kunene.
However maybe child care in the borough - then provided by the LCC - was worse
long before Bexley took over. Back in the days when Bonkers was
actively seeking news I received a disturbing message from a reader which
led to the following tale from an inmate of a long closed children’s home in Carlton Road, Sidcup.
I remember we always seemed to be moving around and there were lots of uncles involved. We
used to have to sit with mum and recite the address of where we were living in
case we got lost. I remember Redhill, Kingston, Richmond, Leatherhead, Surbiton
we never seemed to be anywhere for long. The upshot is that Shaz and I ended up
in foster homes and then Hoblands, a children’s home in Sidcup.
The man who ran the home lived there with his family, his little boy (who we
weren’t allowed to talk to) had a huge shiny blue pedal car that was kept in the
area below the main staircase. It wasn’t in a cupboard or anything, just sitting
there being all shiny and blue and pedally. I so wanted to have a go.
At night I was split from Shaz and I was only four or five I guess. I
hated it because that was when one of the staff used to go round deciding which
boy he was going to have that night. We used to hear him walking up the corridor
and pretend to be asleep hoping he was going to go straight past us to another
room or better still, just go back downstairs to his own. His name was Stan, we
used to call him Stan the Man.
I was reading the BBC News website about 15 years ago and I saw that Stan the
Man had been arrested for child sexual abuse going back years so that turned
out alright for him didn’t it? Hopefully he had his bollocks ripped off when he was inside.
Mum eventually came to get us and we got out of Hoblands and went to live in
Orchard Villas in Foots Cray, Kent.
I tried to find out more at the time and the search led me to The National Archives
but it was not especially helpful. The report on Hoblands was sealed for 75
years. Is that an indication of a cover-up by the
authorities? Intriguing, but maybe not much of a story
without the back up evidence.
When I rediscovered the old papers I
looked at
the Archives again. To my surprise the 75 year restriction had been changed to
50 years and once the Archives are open again anyone of a nosy disposition who
fancies a cheap day out can check up on Bexley’s predecessors.
Meanwhile the web reveals that the offender was Stanley Sinkins who was jailed
for a year in 1995 for the Sidcup offences. Maybe if a Council somewhere had not
thought it appropriate to hide the report justice would have prevailed much
earlier and further children saved from their ordeal.
Six years later he was jailed for ten years after being accused of
41 offences against children several of who refused to attend court. As a result he was
convicted of offences against only eleven children (ten boys) in both Sidcup and on
Merseyside. Maybe still not much of a story but such things are thankfully gone from Bexley.